The Health and Social Care Act 2012 set up health and wellbeing boards as committees of the local authority (upper tier and unitary). They are therefore to be treated as if they were committees appointed by the council under section 102 of the Local Government Act 1972.

The intention, however, was that HWBs would be different from the normal council committee as they are meant to be forums for ‘collaborative local leadership’. Therefore the Act enables regulations to provide ‘that any enactment relating to a committee appointed under section 102 of the 1972 Act does not apply in relation to an HWB or applies in relation to it with such modifications as may be prescribed in the regulations’. This document sets out how the government intends to apply regulations to ensure the HWBs work in the way envisaged in the Act.